


Young & Tragic

by The_Lord_of_Chaos



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Gen, Phic phight 2020, Space Case, Team Humans, character death is implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:08:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23616538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Lord_of_Chaos/pseuds/The_Lord_of_Chaos
Summary: Danny's become a cryptid in a very unusual place.Title comes from the Album: Dead Man's Bones
Relationships: Danny Fenton & Danielle "Dani" Phantom
Comments: 6
Kudos: 124
Collections: Phic Phight!





	Young & Tragic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bibliophilea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bibliophilea/gifts).



> Posting this for PhicPhight2020. This is for Bibliophilea's prompt: Danny is fourteen. But he is so, so much older than that.

“Hang on, was that guy a kid?”

“There’s kids everywhere.”

“Yeah, but this one looked like he was too old to be here.”

Danny grinned.He had already turned a corner, but he went invisible anyway, just in case they came to look.There were already starting to be rumors about him.Not that he minded.He’d latched onto that sort of thing a while ago, and he encouraged it.Getting caught though would take him from being the local cryptid to being the local mystery/scandal and he liked things the way they were.

There was a bit of an air of panic everywhere.Not because of Danny, of course.He was happy to be the rumored impossibility, but he never wanted to scare people, especially not where he was at the moment.One of their critical machines had suffered a rather catastrophic failure and the parts they’d jury rigged together to replace it didn’t have the best odds of getting them to their next shipment.

Danny phased through the door to the big engineering bay that kept everyone alive and made his way to the oxygenator.He probably could repair it himself, it didn’t look difficult, and that would be even better, seeing the looks on people’s faces to discover that it was just suddenly fixed, but Danny also didn’t want to risk it.He put the box with the new part in it at the base and let himself drift up the rafters.He wouldn’t have to wait long, they were probably doing checks on the makeshift replacement as often as they could. 

Only a few moments later an engineer Danny recognized came in and went straight to the oxygenator with a clipboard.He started checking levels off on his tablet and then walked away.He hadn’t even seen the box.Danny reached out and just a touch of telekinesis had the box drag ever so slightly across the floor.A small noise in the active room, but Jeremy heard it and he turned around and saw the box.

Danny had been tempted to put a giant bow on top, but that would have ruined the game.Though almost impossible, it was conceivable that a spare part had been missed on an inventory check, that it had never been logged, that it had remained hidden for who knew how long.It was conceivable that the part had always been lying around somewhere.It was conceivable that someone had found it and then left it out anonymously instead of claiming credit for saving the day.It was conceivable.The thing was, a bow would have given it away, because there wasn’t anything so frivolous around for oh so many miles.He’d settled for drawing a rocket ship on the side with the words “Planet Express” written along the side. 

“What in the stars?” Jeremy said.Then there were some curses.He ran out the door and a few moments later more people followed.They looked inside the box and someone started crying.Danny should have brought a camera. 

He’d thrown in some other things, some things they wouldn’t have seen since the last shipment; that wasn’t as bad as a bow.A bow would have been as good as giving them proof that something supernatural was going on.A cryptid should never be confirmed.Someone would say they saw a teenage boy walking towards engineering with a box, but surely he’d been mistaken.Teenagers were as non-existent as bows.The only children around were the ones who had been born there.The oldest was nine.Was it Andrew’s birthday soon?Danny would have to do something.It wasn’t every day the first child born on Mars turned ten. 

Danny stuck around for a while, watched the party that started as soon as the new part was in place, made himself visible every now and then, but always careful no one got more that a glimpse of him.Eventually though, it was time to get the map back to the Far Frozen.He told it where to take him and off he went with a sigh.He never got to stay as long as he liked.He never really stayed anywhere for long anymore.It had been so long since he’d had anyone to tie him down to one spot, so long since he’d let himself get overly attached to anyone who wasn’t a ghost.It was easier that way.He’d been doing what was easier for so long.

It had been easier to give up on being a part of NASA.It had been easier to live with his parents and tinker with their inventions never really leaving except to be Phantom.Easier to stay in Amity until Amity was the place he never wanted to return to ever again.Easier than trying to follow his dreams when moving on was impossible for the guy who stopped aging when he was fourteen. When it was still so dangerous to reveal what he was.

It became a problem after a while, the bit where he didn’t have any papers.Or, at least, it became a problem when the papers he had didn’t really match up with what everyone saw.Sure, there were eighteen year olds who looked like they belonged in middle school. Getting his drivers license hadn’t been a problem.Going to college was the same.People just assumed he was a late bloomer.He’d been visiting the Amity Park observatory since he was a toddler, so getting a summer job there wasn’t an issue.They knew he was an adult.For a while, as long as he had a paper trail, he could push through any doubt people had about the guy who looked like he was maybe just out of middle school.He held out for a while pretending it wouldn’t ever catch up to him.Everyone in town knew him, and if they scratched their heads and cracked jokes asking him when he was going to hit puberty, Danny could laugh along and pretend he wasn’t waiting for people to start looking a little harder at that Danny Fenton guy. 

The map took him to the Far Frozen and he spent a few days catching up with Frostbite, another few with Clockwork, and then a visit with Wulf for a return portal to Earth.It had been so long since anyone had had a stable portal he could reliably use without waiting however long they were going between expeditions.Danny hopped out in a small town in… He pulled out his phone to check.The Amazon.There were enough local cryptids and Danny didn’t like messing with the local lore.He went human when he had a chance and just played a tourist kid for a while.It had been a while since he had been to South America.It would be cool to see what had changed.He’d heard good things about the restoration zones.

His phone started pinging with all of the texts he’d missed from Danielle. 

He took a look and texted her back.“You’re in the Philippines, try harder next time.”He took a picture of one of the mountains in the distance and sent it off.

They’d tried traveling together when he’d finally left Amity.He’d gone to his last funeral and she’d been there, standing next to him as his last mortal connection was buried in the ground.She took him to Namibia first.Danielle couldn’t be tied down, but there was a city there she’d been returning to for about a decade where there was always the air of a carnival.He’d tried to stick to her, but even though he never let himself call anywhere home, he still couldn’t help but let himself grow temporary ties.His obsession had evolved over time, but at his core he was the same.There wasn’t anywhere in the world where there weren’t problems and when he found one he needed to fix, well, he needed to fix it. So Danielle would move on and he would stay, and if he caught up to her before he found something new to catch hold of him, then all the better, but more often than not they were keeping up by phone.

He got a return text.

“Finally! Thought you’d been eaten by Martians.And Amazon, by the way.Oh yeah, one picture.Take that space case.”

It was a game they’d started playing once Danny had traveled the world a few times.Take a new picture every day and if the other could guess where you were before you left for your next haunt they won.Danielle always had an advantage in the beginning, since she had traveled for so much longer than Danny, but even when those ninety years didn’t seem like such a wide gap, Danny was still disadvantaged by the fact that he just stuck around in places longer.It had been cheating when he stumped her with his first Mars photos when the colony had been new.He could only send them when he had already left, but he still counted it as his best win.Danny took a picture of himself flipping off his phone.It had been a very long time since he’d had any concern that he set a good example for her.He checked his maps app and tried to figure out how long it would take him to get to the Philippines.It would be good to see her again.He heard some shouting in the distance… He should probably go check that out first, though.


End file.
